Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always
Speaker 1: for tuning in to our our our Halloween Phase podcast.
Speaker 1: Critics will call it it's like a blue phase, kind
Speaker 1: of spookier. That's right, I am today, I am Ben. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's our super producer, Casey Pegro on the ones and twos.
Speaker 1: So this is part two of our episode on the
Speaker 1: Beast of and uh. And we were talking off Mike
Speaker 1: before we started part two. Uh, Gabe, I don't know
Speaker 1: how much of it made it on the air in
Speaker 1: part one, but Gabe Lizier, who is our our north
Speaker 1: star in the world of research, really surprised us with
Speaker 1: this with with some of the research here, like in
Speaker 1: a way that I don't know, Noll makes me feel
Speaker 1: like maybe maybe we're nerds. I'm not sure. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think everyone who's listening to part one will know
Speaker 1: that about six of the content of that episode is
Speaker 1: us gushing about the movie Brotherhood of the Wolf. Hopefully
Speaker 1: everyone's watched it by now, or maybe save it. I
Speaker 1: don't know. We can't control what you do. Um, but
Speaker 1: there's a section in the research that that Gabe provided
Speaker 1: us about pop culture references to this story, The Beast
Speaker 1: of Jevodont, and he mentions a Robert Lewis Stevenson story
Speaker 1: UM that references this event to some degree, and the
Speaker 1: movie Teen Wolf starting Uh starring Michael J. Fox. I
Speaker 1: kind of think he was joking, because that certainly is
Speaker 1: a pop culture reference to were wolves. But in my
Speaker 1: mind and both of our minds, clearly the number one
Speaker 1: reference to this story and pop culture is the Brotherhood
Speaker 1: of the Wolf. It is known as they say, a
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones, which is adapted from the song about Empire.
Speaker 1: George ore R Martin. Please put out Wind's Winter. He's
Speaker 1: not gonna do it. You can't tell him what to do.
Speaker 1: God when you know one day anyhow, Yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: you're at Gabe. We were. We were surprised if we
Speaker 1: thought maybe you were were pulling a fast one on us,
Speaker 1: because uh, we're the three of us are such big
Speaker 1: fans of you do that. We were like, obviously, gave
Speaker 1: is why is Gabe not talking about Brotherhood of the Wolf.
Speaker 1: This is very important to us. Ben. I love that
Speaker 1: we have such a shared appreciation for this movie, UM,
Speaker 1: and a shared appreciation for this story. So let's get
Speaker 1: back into it. This story kept developing and either kept
Speaker 1: being these really interesting characters that would present themselves. We've
Speaker 1: got the you know, the disgraced soldier, We've got the
Speaker 1: scrappy young lad. You know, it's it's really I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's perfect for making a movie about UM. And
Speaker 1: a new character enters the fight, uh, a nineteen to
Speaker 1: twenty year old young woman named Marie Jean Valet uh
Speaker 1: and she uh went after the beast with a pike
Speaker 1: of her Ownly, this was a bayonet attached to a pole.
Speaker 1: I would say, that's still pretty pike. Like it's a
Speaker 1: it's an improvised pike. And on August eleven, seventeen sixty five,
Speaker 1: she was crossing the River desag Casey d E s
Speaker 1: g E S probably des the River des Casey on
Speaker 1: the case with her sister UM, armed with said improvised pike,
Speaker 1: and managed to give that beast a stick in, you know,
Speaker 1: gave it a good old poke in the chest and
Speaker 1: impaled it, you know, drew blood. But still, you know,
Speaker 1: in keeping with what we know about this creature, it
Speaker 1: got away again. But Valet became this like an heroine.
Speaker 1: You know, they dubbed her the Amazon and the Maid
Speaker 1: of getting God of a I'm sorry now forgotten that
Speaker 1: jod Devon the Maid of Jeeval. This is all stays
Speaker 1: in um and I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that's
Speaker 1: the badass woman in the Brotherhood of the Wolf. Probably
Speaker 1: inspired by this real life character. Uh, much more ninja
Speaker 1: like in the movie though, if I'm not mistaken. But
Speaker 1: such a fun story and grizzly. It has all the
Speaker 1: things that we love about spooky historical tales. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: we have these human interest stories of brave individuals surviving
Speaker 1: these attacks and in some cases wounding the beast or
Speaker 1: appearing to But the official hunters didn't have much luck
Speaker 1: at all. You know, we know that they went out
Speaker 1: and they killed wolves, you know, more than a thousand likely, uh.
Speaker 1: And they also kind of everybody assumed this was like
Speaker 1: an uber version of a wolf. This was a really big,
Speaker 1: like dire wolf kind of thing. It just made sense.
Speaker 1: I will add a quick trigger warning if anyone's considering
Speaker 1: watching Brotherhood of the Wolf if you are bothered by
Speaker 1: animal violence, not the movie for you, because a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff that we're talking about here there are
Speaker 1: piles and piles of dead wolves that you see like
Speaker 1: this this whole period here where people were presenting these
Speaker 1: beasts to the court. Um, you see a lot of
Speaker 1: grizzly just actual facts wolves. I mean, I'm sure they
Speaker 1: didn't actually slaughter a bunch of wolves, but it's very
Speaker 1: realistic and very gory. And if that's something that that
Speaker 1: bothers you, I would I would maybe give this movie
Speaker 1: a pass. But um, you're right then the hunters were
Speaker 1: really flummixed. Uh this Gean Charles Uh and his son,
Speaker 1: a hunting team from Normandy, made a big show of
Speaker 1: coming to Jeval Dance who to put an end to
Speaker 1: this once and for all. And they're the ones that
Speaker 1: were boasting they'd already killed wolves and that they you know,
Speaker 1: we're up to the task. But in fact, the no
Speaker 1: one really knew if it was a wolf or not.
Speaker 1: All of these disparate descriptions of the thing really made
Speaker 1: it super unclear. Um, and we'll get into some of
Speaker 1: the possibilities and a little bit. Yeah, for now, we're
Speaker 1: gonna follow the career of the beast. So eventually, after
Speaker 1: repeated failures, folks like the Dino Vols give up and
Speaker 1: the King is getting irritated. This is making the king
Speaker 1: look bad, you know what I mean. So he eventually
Speaker 1: sends his own personal bodyguard, one Francois Anton. He is
Speaker 1: seventy one years old, so he's no spring spring chicken.
Speaker 1: He and his nephew on September set shoot a very
Speaker 1: large wolf near an abbey at chase It, which is
Speaker 1: assumed to be the beast. They were like, this wolf
Speaker 1: was so big, This wolf could easily eat children. It's
Speaker 1: gotta be this is this is the wolf we're looking for.
Speaker 1: And Francois is awarded. He gets money, he gets actual
Speaker 1: titles of nobility. The corpse of the animal, and this
Speaker 1: is what they're alluding to in Brotherhood of the Wolf.
Speaker 1: The corpse of the animal is stuffed by a taxidermist
Speaker 1: and sent to the royal court at first Side to
Speaker 1: be displayed. But if you've seen the movie, uh, you
Speaker 1: know that the taxidermy job looked really really bad. They
Speaker 1: actually I think they uh Casey correct me if I'm
Speaker 1: wrong on this, but I think they were in the
Speaker 1: film instructed to sort of up right and make it
Speaker 1: scarier big time. They broke its jaw even I believe
Speaker 1: to make it have a wider, kind of scarier looking
Speaker 1: ma um. And yeah, you're right. They almost did like
Speaker 1: a what do they call those things, like a cock
Speaker 1: and tree kind of situation. Yeah, where they like, you know,
Speaker 1: do a Frankenstein's Monster mishmash of parts in it, you know.
Speaker 1: And it was a real hack job. It was literally
Speaker 1: literally Yeah. And that's again another thing that might trigger
Speaker 1: you about the movie. This this is in the movie
Speaker 1: as well. So all's well, that ends well, not psych
Speaker 1: you thought, as we say in the world of memes. Uh.
Speaker 1: The attacks began again. They resumed in December, and this
Speaker 1: comes to us via volume of the Parisian Illustrated Review.
Speaker 1: But this time, just like with any other good sequel,
Speaker 1: the beast seemed different. At least it was behaving differently.
Speaker 1: It used to be afraid of live stock of cattle, right,
Speaker 1: I get it. Cows are big. There's spooky if you
Speaker 1: if you get a mad, you know. But this time
Speaker 1: it wasn't scared of them. It was was it the
Speaker 1: same beast that was just like a gritty reboot of
Speaker 1: itself or was there a new second beast? Didn't matter
Speaker 1: to the Royal Court. They decided to ignore these new
Speaker 1: attacks and again they had very strong control over the press,
Speaker 1: so they just look. Our official line is it's over.
Speaker 1: Francois Antoine killed the creature. But what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: they didn't. Well yeah, but that's the you know, that's
Speaker 1: the pr line is that it's done. Um. But then
Speaker 1: there's another outbreak in June of seventeen sixty seven. Um.
Speaker 1: And then another nobleman gets involved, trying to make you know,
Speaker 1: just make a name for himself and be part of
Speaker 1: the whole fracas here. Uh, Marquis de Chair I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go with that, um, And he organized his own hunt.
Speaker 1: And then there's this guy farmer name is Jean Chassell
Speaker 1: who had been involved in a previous hunt but was
Speaker 1: actually thrown in prison by Antone um who was in
Speaker 1: charge because he like did a bad job navigating and
Speaker 1: led his men into a mucky, swampy bog type place.
Speaker 1: But then all was forgiven when Chassell was able to
Speaker 1: bring down the beast, you know, a beast with a
Speaker 1: with a shot from his from his musket, and that
Speaker 1: was on Mount Moche on June nine of seventeen sixty seven. Amazing,
Speaker 1: And they have the body and they do an autopsy
Speaker 1: and they find human remains inside. This may not have
Speaker 1: been the beast all the time, but this was definitely
Speaker 1: something eating people in the woods. And then they find
Speaker 1: some interesting stuff, don't they As they dig in, they say,
Speaker 1: you know, this animal has some real non lupine, non
Speaker 1: wolf stuff about it. The attacks ends at this point,
Speaker 1: and it was assumed at the time that the beast,
Speaker 1: the beast, this man that had killed was the beast,
Speaker 1: but people were still kind of there. There's like a
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory about whether or not it was in actuality
Speaker 1: a wolf Chestel by the way, like the Amazon has
Speaker 1: a statue in his honor. Of course, what the hell
Speaker 1: was this thing? Um? There's some possibility of these that
Speaker 1: get bandied around. A Eurasian wolf, which I'm guessing is
Speaker 1: just a much larger dire wolfeed type wolf like you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Hey, a, I love this one, and this
Speaker 1: is very much what they kind of went with in
Speaker 1: Brotherhood of the Wolf, an armored war dog, only they
Speaker 1: took it. They took it a step further. Yeah. Indeed, um,
Speaker 1: a striped hyena that's in keeping with that black stripe
Speaker 1: that they've seen. And I'm sure there's some red headed
Speaker 1: hyenas out there in the world. Um or an escaped lion.
Speaker 1: Perhaps some nobleman had it as an exotic pet in
Speaker 1: their menagerie and and it jumped the fence and wreaked
Speaker 1: havoc on the countryside. Yeah, or some kind of prehistoric predator,
Speaker 1: which is super exciting and also probably not true or
Speaker 1: my favorite. Okay, so I should have mentioned this. Uh
Speaker 1: Chastel when he fires that famous shot, and when he
Speaker 1: kills what is largely acknowledged to be the beast, he
Speaker 1: uses a silver bullet. Silver bullet kills this creature. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you can't blame people for saying, this is
Speaker 1: clearly a werewolf. This is werewolf country, that's where wolf
Speaker 1: uh loop gatto here we are. This is just a
Speaker 1: silly question. But like when was werewolf mythology first? Kind
Speaker 1: of when did that come around? I wouldn't have even thought.
Speaker 1: I would have thought would have been later than that.
Speaker 1: But I guess maybe it's one of those tailors old
Speaker 1: his time about humans transforming into creatures. Yeah, in centuries before,
Speaker 1: there have been cases where people were accused of being werewolves,
Speaker 1: usually through some satanic pact. And uh, this was very
Speaker 1: you know this was very in ligne when supernatural beliefs
Speaker 1: of the time. People would have been aware of the
Speaker 1: case of Peter Stump who was accused of being a werewolf.
Speaker 1: He he actually was probably a German serial killer. But
Speaker 1: we have to remember werewolves were very much in play.
Speaker 1: These were real things people were genuinely afraid of. So
Speaker 1: one thing that really stood out, at least to me,
Speaker 1: I think to all three of us when we were
Speaker 1: looking at early descriptions of the beast, is that that
Speaker 1: detail you mentioned earlier and all which is consistent and
Speaker 1: eyewitness accounts, the stripe, the stuff going on along the spine, right,
Speaker 1: that's what led people to think it was as striped hyena.
Speaker 1: Just as we mentioned earlier. Maybe some eccentric aristocrat had
Speaker 1: this in their private menagerie and it escaped. It wasn't
Speaker 1: native to France, so you would have reasonably thought, what
Speaker 1: does this look like? It looks like a wolf, but
Speaker 1: it's not a wolf definitely. So that's like, based on
Speaker 1: that evidence, that's a pretty good argument that it might
Speaker 1: be a hyena, but our hyena known to attack humans,
Speaker 1: not really. Oh and by the way, I realized literally
Speaker 1: in doing the recharch for this episode, that a dire
Speaker 1: wolf is a real thing. It's a prehistoric predator that
Speaker 1: we talked about being one of the possibilities um, not
Speaker 1: just a made up Game of Thrones things. So that's
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Also potentially on that list with something called
Speaker 1: a bear dog um or a hyena don which I
Speaker 1: guess is a prehistoric hyena. And don't forget our farmer
Speaker 1: friends Chassel. There's a fascinating theory that even that that
Speaker 1: has jumped on pretty heavily in our favorite movie Um
Speaker 1: that he himself actually trained the beast to uh to
Speaker 1: murder humans um in an effort to deflect attention from
Speaker 1: some crimes of or another that we don't really know
Speaker 1: uh what that might have been. Uh. And another option
Speaker 1: that we've touched on earlier but that definitely is a thing,
Speaker 1: is the idea that might and I think it's our
Speaker 1: favorite too. We talked about it offline ben Um, the
Speaker 1: idea that it was a juvenile lion, and this gets
Speaker 1: some sand in some of the reporting that we've read. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: think about it. The idea is just like the hyena thing.
Speaker 1: Like we mentioned earlier, it escapes from some private menagerie
Speaker 1: and it begins to do it. Lions do it. Hunts
Speaker 1: with an ambush strategy. It sees his prey by the
Speaker 1: neck and possibly if you do the physics on you know,
Speaker 1: pressure per square inch for the jaw, it could possibly
Speaker 1: decapitate a human being. And that's why people like Carl
Speaker 1: hans Talk argue that a that that a lion was
Speaker 1: the ultimate culprit. It's also true that lions have been known,
Speaker 1: uh in some cases to prey on humans for food,
Speaker 1: like the lions of Tsavo. I was about to say
Speaker 1: the ghost in the darkness, that's the ghost that was
Speaker 1: that's so funny. I was literally I've got that up
Speaker 1: on wiki right now with Val Kilmer and who else
Speaker 1: is that? Michael Douglas a very similar story. Actually, there
Speaker 1: are these lions of Tsavo in Africa that are just
Speaker 1: wrecking the villages and murdering the hell out of people,
Speaker 1: and these two hunters are out to get them and
Speaker 1: and they I believe those lions are in a museum,
Speaker 1: maybe the Field Museum in Chicago, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: I believe, Yeah, I believe they are in a museum.
Speaker 1: Lions typically if they're if they're hunting humans. It's going
Speaker 1: to be because they may have aged out of being
Speaker 1: able to hunt more efficient and more delicious prey, like
Speaker 1: their teeth may have worn down. That's one of the
Speaker 1: big theories. So this could have happened. This could have
Speaker 1: happened in France. And again, just like with Hyena, the
Speaker 1: eyewitnesses of the time, we're probably not familiar with living lions.
Speaker 1: They may have heard of one, they may have seen
Speaker 1: drawing or a woodcut of one. But this problem is
Speaker 1: compounded because the drawings that they would have seen of
Speaker 1: a lion would almost certainly have been drawings with a
Speaker 1: big main, like an adult lion has us. A juvenile
Speaker 1: male lion doesn't have a main. What it does have,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a stripe running down its back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the lions of Tsavo didn't have mains either, and um,
Speaker 1: they you know rampage. I believe it was had to
Speaker 1: do with the British railway bridge construction and Tsavo uh
Speaker 1: in kenya um And that's you know. And then the
Speaker 1: reason that the two white characters were brought in wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily because had anything to do with them caring about
Speaker 1: you know, indigenous people. It was more about you know,
Speaker 1: the continuing the construction project. Um. But these lions, if
Speaker 1: they were juvenile lions, and they wouldn't have had Mainz either.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely righting. So now we have to go to
Speaker 1: what is largely considered the most credible theory. Womp womp
Speaker 1: wolves a wolve for groups of wolves. Are they at
Speaker 1: least super wolves or I I don't see. So the
Speaker 1: idea is this one is that the that the region
Speaker 1: Deevil don't did have a serious wolf infestation, but they
Speaker 1: were just wolves out Wolven, you know, doing what they
Speaker 1: could to eat, and they had a lot of competition
Speaker 1: from a bunch of other wolves. And the question about
Speaker 1: why it became the beast became such a terror, at
Speaker 1: least to smith is is really a question of the
Speaker 1: clergy's agenda. There's the idea that the clergy took was
Speaker 1: very opportunistic and leverage these deaths to try to reinstill
Speaker 1: the fear of God in the population. So the clergy
Speaker 1: folks were saying that this is these attacks are happening
Speaker 1: because God is punishing the French because you got your
Speaker 1: keysters kicked in the Seven Years War and checks out.
Speaker 1: Now it's a divine instrument, so of course it has powers.
Speaker 1: Uh Still it's it's weird, and you know, we see
Speaker 1: that recurrent theme that I'm so glad you mentioned about
Speaker 1: recovering one's masculinity because the hunter who had been thrown
Speaker 1: in jail was doing the same thing as do Hamel.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the story. But one one thing for
Speaker 1: every fan of cryptods in the audience today, there are
Speaker 1: some flaws in the theory. Uh, the beast attacks lasted
Speaker 1: for a pretty long time, longer than they would have
Speaker 1: if it was just like one single wolf with rabies,
Speaker 1: it would have died. Yeah, it's a really good point then,
Speaker 1: and it is a bit of a kink in the
Speaker 1: armor of this version of the events, added to by
Speaker 1: the fact that none of the survivors got rabies, which
Speaker 1: definitely have happened, you know, if they were bitten or
Speaker 1: you know, winged by a rabid wolf. But what do
Speaker 1: you think? What what what led I mean the clergy
Speaker 1: stuff I get, and all the journalism and in them,
Speaker 1: you know, making a big to do about this, and
Speaker 1: all the different the telephone effect of all of these
Speaker 1: different descriptions, But why didn't anybody just do you think
Speaker 1: there weren't people that were attacked. They said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a little wolf. I got wolfed, you know, right,
Speaker 1: because the true story might uh not be s flattering.
Speaker 1: I think maybe that's the case. I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: interesting though, um the way these things happen to take
Speaker 1: on a life of their own, and you know, sad
Speaker 1: for all the folks that died horrifically in this story.
Speaker 1: But damn if it's not a good story, like really
Speaker 1: enough of a story to make a an intentional two
Speaker 1: parter that we you know, we tend to do those
Speaker 1: after the fact, but really really cool, so many interesting
Speaker 1: twists and turns and interesting characters, and uh, if I
Speaker 1: have if I've said it once, I've said a thousand times,
Speaker 1: checkout Brother of the Wolf. You won't be disappointed unless
Speaker 1: you're squigged out by animal stuff. Well, then you won't
Speaker 1: be disappointed. You'll be horrified. It isn't that what Halloween?
Speaker 1: It's all? So when one last note I think would
Speaker 1: be great to end on and maybe of interest to you,
Speaker 1: Casey in your alternate identity across the pond, if you
Speaker 1: want to get some some firsthand experience with this story,
Speaker 1: why not visit the Museum of the Beast of javel Don,
Speaker 1: which is a thing. It's open now. The case of
Speaker 1: the Beast remains largely unsolved to this day. Who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe strolling around through one of the twenty two dioramas, uh,
Speaker 1: you may become the person who finally solves the mystery.
Speaker 1: This museum is big to make it play the whole
Speaker 1: afternoon for interesting. I love a good diorama. And I
Speaker 1: know this is only a side story, but the Lions
Speaker 1: of Tsavo another fascinating story about wild animals. We know,
Speaker 1: we know what these were though they were in fact lions.
Speaker 1: They are taxidermy at the Field Museum in Chicago. So
Speaker 1: if that if that's you know, close by to where
Speaker 1: you are, definitely worth checking that out as well. And
Speaker 1: there's a great episode of stuff you miss in history
Speaker 1: class on the Lions of Tsavo as well. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I missed going to museums. That's why the things I
Speaker 1: missed the most. So that is our story for today.
Speaker 1: That concludes our two part series on the Mystery of
Speaker 1: the Beasts of javl Don. Thanks as always and in
Speaker 1: today's at episode, especially to our super producer Casey Pegram
Speaker 1: patron saint of being patient on a podcast YEP, and
Speaker 1: patron saint of French pronunciation assistants as well. Agreed thinks
Speaker 1: also to Alex Williams who composed this track thanks to
Speaker 1: the Brotherhood of the Wolf, which again, like, I have
Speaker 1: the DVD and I was telling myself I would reward
Speaker 1: myself by rewatching it after we did this episode. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to see if the director, Christoph Ghnz, did anything
Speaker 1: else interesting because it is such a weird movie and
Speaker 1: obviously we were both very taken by. Let's see, he
Speaker 1: did a movie called Crying Freeman which looks very Highlander esque.
Speaker 1: It's got Mark di costcos in it um and look,
Speaker 1: it's got a ninja sword or a Samurai sword situation
Speaker 1: on the cover. He also did oh, he directed the
Speaker 1: Silent Hill movie, but he did Psychonomical and as well
Speaker 1: for an anthology series is an ecronomic con anthology for
Speaker 1: a film? And what's better than love God? And thanks
Speaker 1: of course to uh our own Beast of ridiculous History
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. Okay, the quister is he a lion? Is
Speaker 1: he a striped hyena? Is he a human being? Question
Speaker 1: remains unsolved to this day. We'll see you next time, folks.
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